Pakistan Rapproachment With Afghanistan Steers GoA Away From America

[S2]

In a meeting earlier this month Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Gilani encouraged President Hamid Karzai to begin breaking away from U.S. influence and look to the PRC and Pakistan as allies. Based upon a Pakistani policy paper, Gilani's views were that America is not in ascendance and Afghanistan cannot afford to be associated with our declining value.

For too long Pakistan has made few overtures to the GoA and, instead, embraced a policy of armed confrontation via their proxy armies. This constitutes (if true) the first substantive effort by Pakistan to "assist" their Afghan neighbor-

Pakistan Asks Afghanistan To Distance Itself From U.S. Afghan Authorities Say-WAPO April 27, 2011

Is anybody surprised?

[S2]

Cactus Reply

"...if Karzai lives up to the instinctive Leftist tendencies of his alma mater, this kind of talk would resonate with him and become yet another wedge betwen the GOA and the GOTUS."

Concur. There's every reason to believe that Afghanistan will broach these possibilities. OTOH, they'll do so while attempting to maintain the maximum leverage. IMV this means public posturing against the American presence while private pleading of our indispensibility (and money). They'll ask, privately, that we work to maintain an increasingly low profile.

I imagine, OTOH, they'll very publically roll out the red carpet for the PRC and grant any and all sort of concessions WRT to mineral acquisitions. Pakistan? That'll be a more circumspect intersection. There are real issues here. However, I wouldn't be surprised if Pakistan doesn't attempt to package Chinese carrots with Pakistani sticks.

The leverage of proxy armies will continue playing a role. How Pakistan packages those and how they posture to package those will also prove interesting. They may seek to declare opposition to such while continuing to retain as much influence among the taliban as possible.

Worst case for Pakistan would be a taliban which senses Pakistan is prepared to offer them on a mantle for Afghani reconciliation. Such may make the afghan taliban their enemy as well.

[Cactus]

S-2, I took off my previous post because I was not really surprised, just confused for a few moments. The confusing aspect of this story: That the US wants to maintain military forces in land-locked Afghanistan after 2014, and that Pakistan actually objects to this arrangement which gives it some leverage over the US. Logically the US would want to get out of the place and regain flexibility of action ASAP, and Pak would want to maintain some leverage over the US (Predators can fly from Arabian Sea just as well as from Afghanistan, no?). But it was not really all that confusing.